User Reviews

This is one of the better German comedies in recent years. If you like movies such as "Wir können auch anders", "Goodbye Lenin", "Drechslers zweite Chance" or UK-working-class tragicomedies like "The Full Monty", "Waking Ned" or "Brassed Off" you might easily dig this one too. It shows some sympathetic German actors with a good script and set in one of the most beautiful but in German film history underrated areas of Germany - the Harz. Three unemployed fellas want to raise a lumberjack-tournament to make some money. They belong to the so-called "reunion-losers", citicens from the "assimilated" German Democratic Republic (DDR) who fell through the capitalistic grid but somehow try to get along anyway - a realistic problem. The film picks it up sensible and balanced but manages not to drown in mourning and to show the bizarre-comical aspects as well. There are one or two passages that move a little slow but it ain't too bad. To hell with "Die 7 Zwerge 1 + 2"! "Die Könige..." proofs that there is still intelligent entertainment from here contrary to that shetty slapstic-junk.